Women of Early Christianity

by Alfred Brittain; Mitchell Carroll

The next year a new synod was held, and the action of the Synod of the Oak was confirmed. The emperor ratified the sentence, and Chrysostom quietly yielded to the inevitable and retired from the city. As soon as the people heard of the occurrence, another uproar followed, which resulted in the conflagration of Saint Sophia and other buildings and in the persecution of many adherents of the exiled patriarch. Olympias and many others were condemned to exile. "Among those who anticipated the sentence by flight was an old maid named Nicarete, who deserves mention as a curious figure of the time. She was a philanthropist who devoted her means to works of charity, and who always went about with a chest of drugs, which she used to dispose of gratuitously, and which rumor said were always effectual."

Meanwhile, Chrysostom was transported to a remote town among the ridges of Mount Taurus, in Lesser Armenia. He suffered many hardships, but he was sustained by the sympathy of his friends, especially Olympias, with whom he corresponded, and who never told him of the persecutions she herself underwent in his behalf. Her own last years, however, were darkened by her afflictions, and Chrysostom tried to lighten her melancholy by his letters of consolation. Her saintly life cast a halo about her memory after she passed away, and a legend was current in later times that her encoffined body had, by her own directions, been cast into the sea at Nicomedia, whence it was borne to Constantinople, and thence to Brochthi, where it reposed in the Church of Saint Thomas.

Chrysostom's last years were perhaps his most useful ones, being spent in regulating by letter the affairs of the churches. The Pope at Rome never ratified his condemnation, and he was universally beloved as one subjected to unjust persecution. Owing to his undiminished prominence in all Church affairs, the ruthless empress pursued him in his exile, and an order was despatched for him to be transported to Pityus, a desolate place on the south-eastern coast of the Euxine; but on the way thither he expired from exhaustion, in the sixtieth year of his age. He was the last of the patriarchs to stand out against the corruption and the frivolity of the court, and henceforth the archbishops were but subservient adherents of the emperor and the empress.

His innocence and merit were acknowledged by the succeeding generation, and thirty years later, at the earnest solicitation of the people, Chrysostom's remains were brought to Constantinople. The Emperor Theodosius advanced to receive them as far as Chalcedon, and implored the forgiveness of the injured saint in the name of his guilty parents, Arcadius and Eudoxia.

Less than four years after the birth of her son, Theodosius, Eudoxia, in the bloom of her youth and the height of her power, came to her end as the result of a miscarriage; and this untimely death confounded the prophecy of Porphyrius of Gaza, who had foretold that she would live to see the reign of her son. Pious Catholics saw in her untimely death the vengeance of Heaven for the persecution of Saint Chrysostom; and few save the emperor and her children bewailed the loss of the worldly and ambitious empress.

X

THE RIVAL EMPRESSES--PULCHERIA AND EUDOCIA

Beside the deathbed of the gentle Arcadius, whom destiny snatched from life in the fulness of manhood, stood four weeping orphans of tenderest years, three maidens and a little lad--all too young to realize the greatness of their loss. These were the seven-year-old Theodosius, heir to the throne, the nine-year-old Pulcheria and her two younger sisters, Arcadia and Marina. In the orphanage of the children, it was natural that the eldest daughter should feel that upon herself rested the responsibility of acting as mother to her brother and sisters; and Pulcheria possessed the mental endowments and the rapidly developing nature which peculiarly fitted her for this task. Fortunately the administration of the Empire was in the hands of the praetorian prefect Anthemius, a wise and able counsellor, who acted as the guardian of the young prince and his sisters and directed their education. He, with the Patriarch Atticus, who was their religious guide and spiritual adviser, provided them with every possible advantage for intellectual and spiritual growth. Pulcheria early exhibited an earnest and almost manly intelligence. Along with the sympathetic and mystical temperament of a saint, she possessed the strong, practical sense of her grandfather, Theodosius the Great. Hence she was quick to turn her attention to problems of statecraft and displayed a precocious capacity for administration. Her duties as guardian of her brother and sisters also developed her innate love of mastery, so that as a child she gradually conceived a longing for the duties and responsibilities of the imperial station.

At the tender age of fourteen, Pulcheria began to win influence in state affairs. Proud and ambitious like her mother Eudoxia, she sought as rapidly as possible to assert her authority; and, as her power and influence grew, that of Anthemius gradually ceased to exert itself. By no other hypothesis can we explain why Anthemius at this time retired from active duties and did not retain his office as regent at least until two years later, when Theodosius, in his fifteenth year, should attain his majority.